Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the motion pictures but at the Cinema Museum, a concealed gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be informed, I rarely endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion was a one-man program by my old mate George Layton, actor, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're perfectly written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a boy being raised by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity back then, regretfully only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist questioning, though, how often these remarkable texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers packing their students' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', manifest destiny and, obviously, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, however no one might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' implied living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just being able to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child hardship was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly wearing last season's Nike trainers.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their knowledge mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine difficulty, not the poverty of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their smart phones, rather of roaming totally free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, but nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps providing immediate gratification in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI generated smash hit on a cellphone a couple of inches broad ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the very best images are said to be on the radio, even better images can be discovered in the printed word.

One of the most dismaying things I have actually checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention of today's children.

No wonder kid, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually dropped alarmingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class pupils - boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to confess they have been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They suffer from an absence of parental involvement and consequent paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult neglect from his domineering mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.

Education was the escape of poverty. It produced significant wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in hardship in neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a fulfilling profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the workplace.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I've got a much better concept.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might start by getting the phone and welcoming George to explore schools, reading from his brief stories.

I truthfully believe that if they might be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, in spite of the distance in years.

You never ever understand, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the internet, the police are significantly taking second tasks to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki instructor, whatever that is.

My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop has to take the biscuit.

It's also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I do not expect there's any threat of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a child from a complete stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may turn out to be the least of our issues. We now find out that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is devouring crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put local anglers out of business.

It's bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs helping themselves to what's left.

We're likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive species' having actually left into the wild and are colonising cities as far afield as Plymouth and Aberdeen. No doubt we'll be putting them up in the closest Holiday Inn before long.

Which's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids in a school play area in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?

We've got enough trouble with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a pathetic three percent of GDP on defence by the year 2525 with a shovel-load of Maldon's finest. The way Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a couple of years' time. And 3 per cent of things all is still stuff all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he 'd stated the exact same about those of us who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.

Having just recently declared that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day off?